


like water

by ap_trash_compactor



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Arranged Marriage, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ap_trash_compactor/pseuds/ap_trash_compactor
Summary: Careful what you wish for. (And if you get it, don't let it get you down.)





	like water

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally just supposed to be an excuse for a NSFW one-shot, then I started thinking about how it might work as a long and ~dramatique~ examination of how Arihnda might learn to navigate Chiss politics, then I thought "wait, no, I can do it as a one-shot for Fluff Friday on the discord." It's not... super-fluffy... it's got kind of a weird "outline" vibe, and it's a day late, but... here we are. Hopefully I've managed to explain the majority of the AU elements as they arise in real-time in the story, but, eh.
> 
> Also, a teen rating and fewer than 7,000 words? Who am I?

**i.**

Ar’Alani alone of the five Admirals rises from her chair. Her face is set and cold.

 

That is all Thrawn needs to see, to know the decision has not been as he had hoped.

 

“Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” she announces stiffly, “the Aristocras have rendered their decision. On the basis of your observations and your recommendations, they will send a formal diplomatic delegation to the Galactic Empire.” So the Chaf family has bested him. “For your service and your contributions to the resolution of this question, the Council and the High Command extend their gratitude. It is with pride in having earned the deepest respect of the Aristocras that you may return to your post.” Ar’Alani pauses only a moment, as if waiting for a bitter taste to pass.  “You are dismissed.”

 

And when Thrawn learns that the representative they are sending is Thrass, who had almost been lost to him once already, he knows that that it is a punishment personally selected for him by Aristocra Chaf’orm’bintrano.

 

 

 

**ii.**

“Who is that — a Pantoran with an eye condition?”

 

“No,” hisses Arihnda nastily, “it’s — you stay here. I’ll tell you about him later. He’s a very important representative.”

 

“Not going to introduce us?” croons Juahir.

 

“Are you kidding? I probably won’t even be able to introduce myself.”

 

 

 

**iii.**

“You made a very good impression on the Ascendancy representative last week, Arihnda.”

 

“Thank you, Senator,” Arihnda says, just demurely enough to avoid arrogance — but not so deferential that it seems she doesn’t know full well she deserves the compliment.

 

“Yes. I think he was particularly impressed that you managed to say his name correctly on the second try.” Arihnda’s always been reasonably skilled at modulating her voice, and imitating sounds; it had helped a great deal in fixing her backwater accent. “Anyway,” Renking says, waving a hand absently, “Why don’t you sit down?” He’d asked her to stop by his office — presumably not just to offer compliments. She sits, and waits for the real news. “I heard a little rumor.” He leans back and his chair, looking at her. “Apparently, there’s some interesting back and forth between the Ascendancy and the Empire about mining rights, possibly related to a mutual defense compact. It’s serious enough that they’re sending an expanded delegation, headed by some, I don’t know, Cha-for-bin-something-or-other  — I’m not sure of the details, really, but I want to wedge a foot in the door of those talks. I’d like you help me with that. You’re my mining expert, after all.”

 

 

 

**iv.**

It is Ar’Alani who brings him the news — or rather, attends the conversation in which he and Thrass, by flickering holo displays, bitterly contest the issue.

 

“The Chaf family —” Thrawn begins in a spitting tone —

 

“The Chaf family hold the balance of power among the Aristocras,” Thrass says over him.

 

Thrawn hisses. There is a moment of silence. Then he says: “This is a blow to my ability to advance within the Ascendancy, which is exactly _why_ Aristocra Cha—”

 

“The matter is decided,” Thrass says sharply.

 

 

 

**v.**

“Contracts and alliances are formalized with _what?”_

 

“Arihnda,” Juahir says, her horrified voice tumbling over Driller’s incredulous one, “I know you always think career first, but I haven’t just been _teasing_ you when I’ve been asking about your personal life, you know. It matters, having someone. You can’t be serious about —”

 

“I’m perfectly serious, Juahir, and for your information I put a great deal of effort into being chosen for this.”

 

“Arihnda,” says Juahir, before Driller can interrupt, “don’t you want to fall in love with someone someday?”

 

 

 

**vi.**

The trip takes longer than she expects — but Thrass is a very polite and solicitous companion, even sociable sometimes.

 

She makes some progress on their language. Some progress. Her natural gift for controlling the shape of her voice gives her a little help in wrapping her lips and tongue around the strange sounds, but only a little. And while imitating sounds comes naturally enough for her — she can even sing a little — learning new grammar does not. And Cheunh has particularly difficult grammar.

 

Body language, though, she learns more easily.

 

She spends many, many hours practicing bowing — more hours than she ever thought such a simple-seeming task would need. But bowing isn’t just a generic motion for the people of the Ascendancy. The Chiss seems to have as many methods for _bowing_ as the Hutts have ways of saying _pay me._ She practices all of them.

 

She practices the appropriate way of standing, too, and even sitting — both require a stillness that is deeper than anything an Imperial would ever consider natural. She does not quite master it.

 

Nevertheless, Thrass is complementary about her efforts — but sometimes, she thinks she senses pity beneath the approving words.

 

And sometimes, she has the vague sense that the man who outranks him, Aristocra Chaf’orm’bintrano, views the whole arrangement as a kind of private joke.

 

 

 

**vii.**

“I believe they intend to perform the ceremony immediately,” Ar’Alani says. She is in a crisply tailored formal dress uniform, and so is Thrawn. This is, after all, a state function.

 

“Indeed,” says Thrawn. “As it does not matter what either party involved thinks of the other, I too think it would be best to waste as little of everyone’s time as possible.”

 

Ar’Alani gives a soft hiss, then grimaces. “I do not disagree,” she says.

 

 

 

**viii.**

It is not really what Arihnda expects of an important state function, which formalizes the alliances between two powerful governments.

 

Of course, she knows it’s merely an elaborate kowtowing to technicality, this mummer’s farce, this so-called marriage, but she had still expected — she doesn’t know, an audience of more than ten, perhaps.

 

But it hardly matters. She’s rehearsed this, too, with Thrass, over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over on their journey here. She is dressed in clothes selected for her by Thrass, has words in her mouth placed there by Thrass, and knows the steps she is expected to take like a dancer knows the flow of their body in time to music. She is prepared. Whether she is performing for ten or ten thousand, she will be perfect.

 

They are in a perfectly square room, with the same kind of soft sheen on the walls as she’d grown used to on the ship. There is a low, lacquered table near one side, and no other decoration.

 

Formbi stops just ahead of them. He begins speaking. Says words that sound formal and fine and, mostly, self-congratulatory. Arihnda, even with her several weeks of tutelage from Thrass, can barely understand even a quarter of it. So as he speaks, she scans the room.

 

A uniformed man she has never seen before, but who bears some resemblance to Thrass — older, a little more… a little less delicate, perhaps — stands near the low table. She guesses he is Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo, her twin sacrifice at the altar of ceremony. Perhaps they will be able to find some kinship in the shared experience. Perhaps he, like her, expects some social advantage to accrue to him from the arrangement, from being one bolt in the complex political apparatus holding two great societies together.

 

Near to him stands an eerie, beautiful, hard-looking woman, visibly older than most anyone else in the room. Arrayed a little sullenly around the edges are seven men and women of varying ages, who are dressed in robes similar to Formbi’s and Thrass’ — though only Formbi’s robes are yellow, and only one person besides Thrass wears red. Although, Arihnda notices, there is subtly red piping in the Commander’s uniform.

 

Very gently, Thrass touches her elbow, urging her forward, and she walks, alone, to the table, and bows deeply and respectfully to the man there — who has been watching her, she has not failed to notice, since her arrival.

 

“It is my honor to meet you, Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” she says in carefully rehearsed Cheunh.

 

He raises an eyebrow, and bows his head in return — only his head. But then he speaks, in surprisingly fluent, if accented, Basic: “It is my pleasure to meet you, also, Arihnda Pryce.” He raises his head and looks at her for a moment, and then says, rather brusquely, still in Basic: “We shall proceed, yes?”

 

 

 

**ix.**

After the ceremony, which consists of kneeling before the low table and signing their names to an elaborately calligraphed contract which Arihnda could not read, there is a bit of awkward small-talk with the robed dignitaries and the uniformed woman, which Arihnda cannot understand.

 

It doesn't really matter. No one tries to speak to her, and she knows enough from Thrass to know that it would be considered unspeakably rude, a social suicide, to insert herself into conversation without a proper invitation.

 

But still, she had expected slightly more than… than being utterly, soundly ignored. As if she were a statue. As if she were invisible.

 

 

 

**x.**

“Your accent was good,” Thrawn says to her in Basic as he takes her by the elbow and leads her from the little confab that had passed for a wedding. “You practiced.”

 

“Yes, I did,” she says, also in Basic, and suddenly very glad of it. “I’m very gratified to know it paid off.”

 

He pauses in his stride, looks at her. “Paid off?”

 

“Succeeded.”

 

“Ah.” He tugs on her elbow again, leading her through a hall, to a platform that seems to operate by repulsor lift, then up to a docking bay of some kind. There is no more discussion, of any kind.

 

No one has offered to bring her her things. She assumes they will be delivered wherever she is going.

 

 

 

**xi.**

The door he opens for her leads into a bedroom — which has almost nothing in it but a bed. She feels herself pale a little. Thrass had avoided this question, politely, and she’d told herself she could adapt to it either way, but he’s been so _silent_ about everything, almost sourly so —

 

“Your room,” he says, a little curt. Then, noting the expression his face, his body language seems to soften somewhat. She probably wouldn’t even have been able to catch it, if not for her lessons with Thrass. “Mine is just down the hall,” he says, quite politely. “This is a purely formal arrangement.” Then he adds wryly: “We are certainly not expected to produce heirs.”

 

She needs a minute to recover — not from the comment, which is sort of a relief, but from the humor. She hadn’t expected it of him. “Well,” she says, trying very cautiously for humor herself, “that’s good news I suppose.”

 

“Indeed,” he says lightly. “Especially as a half-breed would hardly be considered sentient.”

 

And this time, she needs a minute to recover from the comment. “Yes,” she says, “well. That’s very interesting.” She looks around the room once more, then back at him. “I was wondering — I’d like to continue my language lessons. I feel it would be helpful to be able to communicate, and to learn my way around. It’s my hope that once the Empire begins —”

 

He frowns, suddenly, in a way that cuts off her speech. “Thrass did not explain?” There is a beat of silence. “You are not expected to _do_ anything.”

 

She recovers herself quickly. “Oh, I know that,” she says, “I know there’s no _official_ duties in this position, but I thought I could try and make myself helpful.” He continues frowning, but one of his eyebrows is raised. She hopes that’s a good sign. “Get out and meet people, that sort of thing?”

 

His eyebrow arches a little higher “Your movements will be restricted, for the sake of information security.”

 

Arihnda frowns, this time. That is not ideal, but — “But you surely — you must go to social functions at least?”

 

He looks over at her again. Looks at her a long time, while something like amusement comes into his features. “As I am currently stationed planetside, I may find it convenient to go to… _social functions_ , yes.”

 

“And you could bring me, if not as an official representative of the Empire, at least as, in a strictly technical sense, your spouse?”

 

“Certainly,” he says, starting to smile. “I am sure Aristocra Chaf’orm’bintrano would be happy to see his chosen alliance so represented.”

 

Which feels like a joke at her expense, as well, but she’s grow used to that since leaving Lothal. And since leaving Lothal, she’s learned that she can still turn things the way she wants, even with people who think she’s a joke.

 

“I’m glad to hear it,” she says smoothly.

 

“Indeed,” he says. Then, after looking at her perhaps overly long, his smile fading back to a frown, he says: “I am sure you are tired. Perhaps you should rest.”

 

“Yes,” she says. “But — my bags —”

 

“You will find sufficient clothes in the closet already, I believe.”

 

 

 

**xii.**

The next day is more of a whirlwind than she expects. Apparently Thrawn has taken her intention to be seen in society to heart, and has, either late in the evening, or very early in the morning, rustled up a tutor and cultural guide for her — or perhaps this had been prepared in advance of her coming, she is not really sure. Thrawn introduces them briefly, and abandons them.

 

Stent is not entirely welcoming of her — Thrawn had been right about one thing, at least — but he has a kind of narrow-minded fanaticism about doing as Thrawn expects.

 

Of course, militaristic precision and narrow-minded fanaticism pervade his approach to language tutoring, as well — “The Commander believes we must know Basic, so I learn Basic. Now you will learn Cheunh. If you can.” — and she is exhausted by the end of the day.

 

This is the pattern that repeats every day for the next two weeks.

 

And for two weeks, her bags do not appear. It becomes intolerable. Thrawn does not seem particularly interested in her when he returns from wherever his office is each day, but she has never been shy about making herself seen when she needs to be. So finally, she decides simply to follow him through the apartment on his silent way directly to his bedroom, and make herself heard.

 

“I was wondering about my bags —” she starts to say, firmly but still within the bounds of politeness.

 

He stops in his path, turns slowly. “Thrass did not explain.”

 

She frowns. “No, he didn’t say anything about a delay. And he’s gone back to Coruscant —”

 

“I am aware that he has departed. I had thought he would have explained this before leaving. I apologize. Items from outside the Ascendancy are not permitted. You will have a complete and proper wardrobe of appropriate dress supplied by the end of the week.”

 

It is the first thing since Uvis threatening her family mine that truly makes her reel. She is not a very sentimental person, and she does not keep many personal items, but — “I had things from my family. Holovids —” she cuts herself off, clamping down on a sudden shrillness. When she’d told her family what she was planning to do her parents had both, of course, objected. Cajoled. Argued. Protested. But finally, her father had fallen silent and her mother had wilted into a mere insistence that she at least take some memories along. Arihnda had done it to please her, hadn’t even thought of looking at them — but to have them taken entirely away without warning —

 

Something must be in her face, because there is the subtle softening of his body language, again, and he says, almost with compassion: “I will inquire if there is anything that can be recovered.”

 

 

 

**xiii.**

Nothing can be recovered.

 

Which does not really surprise her. Then, in her heart somehow already knowing the answer, she asks: “I don’t suppose I can place a call to my family, either?”

 

“I do not believe that it would be permitted, no. But I will make inquiries.”

 

Those come to nothing, as well.

 

Arihnda steels herself for the worst before he tells her, and there is something like strange, pitying approval in her face when she only says: “I see. Thank you, Commander, for inquiring on my behalf.”

 

And of course, there isn’t really anything else for her to do, at least not in the immediate term. The Empire and the Ascendancy have clearly agreed to use an otherwise useless pawn for a petty bit of formal choreography. It isn’t really surprising; she can’t imagine any Imperial of real social import, Baron Fel say, allowing one of their children to be sent away from home and married to an _alien._ Of course she’d been able to snatch the role: no one _really_ wanted it.

 

And now she is expected to do nothing with it.

 

Well. She’ll see about that.

 

 

 

**xiv.**

Thrawn does make good on his promise about social functions, a month or so later. Arihnda is practically giddy about it, and Thrawn seems at least entertained — perhaps by her, perhaps by the prospect of something else, she isn’t sure.

 

Arihnda can not wait to get _out_ — Stent is as much nanny and prison guard as he is language tutor — and to talk to people. She may not be, she knows, the softest person, but softness never got anyone anywhere. Softness doesn’t do much, but socializing does. Information does. _Conversation_ does.

 

And there is a little part of her that would like to have friends again. She’s found she misses Juahir a great deal more than she expected.

 

But Thrawn had not been remotely overstating when he implied that as an alien, she would be unwelcome. Most people are subtle with their disdain, or their disgust, but the little blows keep coming, relentless, one after the next, all evening long. The coldness. The revulsion. The sanctimony. It is beyond anything she has ever experienced even on Coruscant.

 

And spontaneous conversation, the very few and painfully humiliating chances she has to try it, is much, much harder than she had expected it to be.

 

By the end of the evening, Arihnda feels as though she is holding herself together with Spacer’s tape. When they get back to Thrawn’s home, or her prison, or whatever it is, she goes directly to bed.

 

 

 

**xv.**

“Where’s Stent?” she says to him the next morning, before he leaves.

 

“In the hall. I have told him not to burden you with any tutoring today.”

 

“Why — _why_ would you do that?”

 

He raises an eyebrow. “Do you not wish a break from your studies, after last night?”

 

She feels her face burn, then masters herself. “No,” she snaps sharply, “I do not wish _a break._ ”

 

And that earns her a long, considering glance.

 

 

 

**xvi.**

There is only so much silence that can exist between two people who are reasonably social and happen to share the same home. Thrawn and Arihnda exist more or less at its limit, but they do speak a little, briefly, in the evenings — mostly because Arihnda has no one else, besides Stent, to talk _to._ He asks her questions about the Empire, and gives flat, short answers to questions she asks about the Ascendancy.

 

Sometimes she thinks the attitude he has towards her is resentment. She rather understands that: if she is meant to be shuffled out of the way and forgotten, the same must be true for him, as well.

 

But this is only temporary, she tells herself, only a transition period.

 

She will carve a space for herself.

 

 

 

**xvii.**

She is better-prepared for the next function they attend. She prepares not with smiles and the elation of her first attempt, but with grim determination, her face set like a soldier. Thrawn gives her some interesting glances, and seems, overall, less amused. More — something. She isn’t really paying attention to him.

 

It does not go much better, really, but she is less hurt by it.

 

Or at least that’s what she tells herself.

 

 

 

**xviii.**

“What’s this?” she asks.

 

He’s brought a funny object home, tossed it casually on the living-room table. It’s like a brick, but it’s… made of little leaves. She flips through them. They’re covered in script, in neat and orderly rows.

 

He tilts his head at her. “It is a….” He says a word in Cheunh she doesn’t know. Seeing the expression on her face, he searches for a different word, and says in basic: “Book?”

 

 

 

**xix.**

She had thought that she had prepared for herself a steel skin, like the hide of a star destroyer, that would inure against against all the little assaults that pile up through any given evening in elite company — company to which Thrawn apparently has access, though from which, it is now clear to her, he does not quite have _acceptance_.

 

But after nearly three months, she is starting to feel tired. And this night, she is particularly tired.

 

She can feel the whispers when she moves from one group to the next.

 

One person doesn’t even bother to whisper. “I can’t believe someone trained an animal to talk,” they say. Not to her, of course — but not quite quietly enough to go unheard.

 

Temporary, she’d told herself. A transition period, she’d thought. She’d made Coruscant come around to her, she could bring these people around too. But for three months she has been hurling herself against a sheer rock wall, and all she feels is tired.

 

And she has never been so lonely.

 

When it’s over, she goes to bed still in her clothes, still wearing her shoes, she curls herself around a pillow, and for the first time in her life, cries herself to sleep.

 

 

 

**xx.**

She doesn’t rise from her bed when she wakes, cramped and uncomfortable, the next morning, until there is a knock on her door.

 

She takes one deep breath, then another. She calls out that she will be a few minutes. She drags herself out of the bed. To the fresher. Makes herself presentable.

 

She feels as though she hasn’t slept at all — but also feels, mostly, like she might as well keep trudging forward.

 

She hasn’t got a better plan.

 

Thrawn gives her a narrow, wary, assessing kind of look when she emerges from the room. “Would you like me to tell Stent that today should not include any lessons?” he asks, watching her carefully.

 

“No,” she says, gathering the most dignity she can. “I don’t see a reason for that.”

 

He continues looking at her closely, as if searching for evidence of something, or trying to confirm a suspicion. “You were not discouraged by last night, then?”

 

She lifts her chin. “No,” she says, tone forcefully light. “I think it just means I need to work a little harder, don’t you?”

 

He gives her a very long, very strange look indeed. At last he says, slowly: “Perhaps it does.”

 

 

 

**xxi.**

“I have a gift for you,” he says when he comes in the door the next night.

 

He sounds almost a little proud when he says it, and a little sly. He holds out something thin, rectangular, like a placard, wrapped in soft, prettily patterned paper.

 

It is a book. A thin book, with simple-looking sentences, and smoothly finished paper covered in beautiful, fanciful pictures —

 

“It is a children’s book,” he explains. “I thought perhaps light reading would make a pleasant and amusing change of pace from what you have been working on with Stent.” There is a little pause. “And I thought you might enjoy the story.”

 

Arihnda looks at him for a moment, trying to gauge the appropriate level of gratitude to show. She settles, finally, for a demonstration of the gift’s practical value. “Should I read it now?” she asks.

 

A brief smile flutters across his mouth. “If you wish.”

 

“Well,” she says, settling herself onto the couch like a pianist settling in for a rehearsal, “it can’t hurt to try.”

 

But of course, it does hurt to try.

 

“I’m sorry, Commander,” she says abruptly switching back to Basic afters stumbling over yet another word. Her throat is tight with frustration and with rage and — “I’m sorry,” she says again, standing sharply and dropping the book beside her, “but I think I do need a break.”

 

The knock at her bedroom door comes a few minutes later.

 

He has the book in his hand.

 

“I thought perhaps we could try reading together, instead,” he says gently, in Basic.

 

“I don’t think —”

 

“Sometimes,” he says, voice still soft, cutting over her, “when we begin something new, it is like being a child again. It is not such a terrible thing.”

 

She considers that for a moment, and then says: “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” A little pause. She steels herself for the next bit. “I would be most grateful,” she says, “if you would… read this with me.”

 

“Of course,” he says, sounding formal. He turns, and makes a gesture that invites her into the hall.

 

They return to the couch.

 

It is not really reading _together_. They sit by side, yes, but he reads to her. The story is a great deal darker and less juvenile — a great deal more _honest,_ she thinks — than children’s stories in the Empire tend to be.

 

And as it turns out, she does like it.

 

 

 

**xxii.**

“Thrass made a petition to the Aristocra on your behalf on his latest leave,” he says casually, “to give you expanded permissions to visit more of the planet. Admiral Ar’Alani vouched for your security status. They together have obtained limited permissions for you to go — ah, ‘out and about,’ is what Thrass tells me they call it on Coruscant. To talk to people, I mean, not just to take your little — little walks through the local parks. Stent will still accompany you everywhere, of course, and —”

 

Arihnda is so happy she hardly hears the rest of it.

 

 

 

**xxiii.**

She is still not making any headway into Chiss political society, but the next two months go by much, much more pleasantly. Some people, more average types, who seem to pass whatever secret test of for acceptable contact Stent puts between her and every interaction, actually _do_ talk to her.

 

And she learns more, probably, than Stent realizes.

 

Thrawn seems to catch on quite quickly to how much Arihnda is learning. And she finds it’s not unpleasant, to have more to talk about in the evenings.

 

And he starts to ask her different kinds of questions about the Empire. Ones that involve more thought, and discussion.

 

Their brief exchanges start to feel like real conversations, sometimes.

 

That’s not bad, either.

 

 

 

**xxiv.**

“Thrass says they will put you in the children’s classes, of course —”

 

“I don’t suppose your people have many adult beginner classes for anything,” she says over him. She doesn’t really _care_ if she’s going to be in a room with a bunch of children or not, as long as she gets to add one more new, different thing to her days — and she’ll learn even more about the Ascendancy, probably, from children’s careless chatter than from adults’ cagey and considered offerings.

 

So being placed into a children’s… whatever the hell they call this… dance-stretching-martial art _thing_ the Chiss do… class is fine with her.

 

“No,” Thrawn allows, smiling a little, “it is not a concept we have, particularly.”

 

She tilts her head at him. “You seem to get the idea, though.”

 

“I do not share every idea my people have.”

 

“I’ve noticed.”

 

 

 

**xxv.**

Of course, even the things the children do with ease are difficult for her. And it’s decidedly unpleasant, to be laughed at by children when she loses her balance trying to do some difficult pose — they laugh at each other, too, when the same thing happens to one of them, but it still makes her face burn, and makes her more and more and more rigid each time she begins again, which only compounds the problem.

 

The instructor, a thin old man whose age whose age shows in everything except his perfectly blue-black hair, permits this to continue for three classes, before asking her to remain behind.

 

He makes her sit cross-legged on the mat in the middle of the room, and he goes to his office, and then he returns. He sets a glass of water before her, and a jagged, metallic-looking stone beside it.

 

“You may return to my class when you can tell me which of these is the wiser student,” he says. And then he leaves.

 

Arihnda, who recognizes this bit of Chiss philosophy from children’s books, is in class again the next day, trying very hard to be like water. Water, that absorbs and accepts and adapts, that fits the shape of its surroundings, that is passive and gentle and calm.

 

Water, that pervades and dissolves. Water, that carves out mountains and wipes out cities.

 

 

 

**xxvi.**

Being around the children has a cost.

 

Children pass colds and flus amongst themselves as easily as laughter, and eventually they pass one to her. Thrawn brings her something that is supposed to cure it almost instantly. Whatever works for his people, though, doesn’t seem to do anything for her. She feels grotesque, confined to her bed, _invalided_.

 

And then Thrawn brings her something else.

 

“A distraction from your current condition,” he says. It is another book — another children’s book. He reads this one to her, as well.

 

By the time she is better, she has accrued a little collection of story-books.

 

 

 

**xxvii.**

A few days after that, Thrawn comes to her room again.

 

He is holding another book: like the first one she’d seen, it’s sort of brick-shaped.

 

She tilts her head, looks at the book, looks at him.

 

“I thought you might appreciate this one as well,” he says. “It is a little more complex than the others.” And he says that with such a straight face she isn’t entirely sure if there’s humor in it.

 

She almost demures — this feels a little personal.

 

And then, very suddenly, she thinks about the way he fits at the miserable, awkward, hobnob affairs he’s continued to bring her to at her request — she is not really gaining any acceptance herself, but she is picking up more and more little tidbits, scraps of information, that she is spinning into thread, and weaving, slowly into a great tapestry of understanding… And she is gaining to understand how he fits in the social order — or rather, doesn’t. And she thinks, maybe, he’s getting something out of reading to her, too. Perhaps even more than she is.

 

And so it becomes a routine.

 

 

 

**xxviii.**

There is a night not long after when she falls asleep as he’s reading. She isn’t aware of it happening: one minute he is reading to her, and she is trying to follow the words on the page and match them to the sound of his voice, and then next she is waking up, confused but rested, tucked warmly beneath the covers.

 

That becomes a routine, too.

 

 

 

**xxix.**

Then she awakens sometime in the middle of the night to find that Thrawn is still present. Asleep himself, fully clothed and stretched out on top of the covers exactly as he had been when she’d fallen asleep — but still there. He is snoring, and the book he’d been reading to her is on his chest. She has a moment of indecision, and then she decides to simply go back to sleep.

 

And the routine develops a new component.

 

 

 

**xxx.**

“I will be present for the entire duration,” Ar’Alani says. She is still eerie, and still beautiful — though, Arihnda has found in the past few days, not quite as cold as she appears.

 

“I understand,” Arihnda says.

 

Talking to her parents while being watched by the de facto head of the Chiss military is still better than not talking to her parents at all.

 

The call lasts about an hour. Arihnda is profusely apologetic over taking so long to contact them — she says all the right things about that: she’s been _so_ busy the past year, she’s been _so_ engaged, it’s really, _truly_ lovely here — and her parents are… well, they are her parents.

 

After Ar’Alani leaves, Arihnda sits on the couch, looking at the wall. After a few minutes, Thrawn sits beside her.

 

“You miss them,” he says. Strange, how it’s almost a question — he has been a little odd the entire day, as if the whole concept of being close to one’s parents is somewhat confusing and unsettling to him, as if he is trying to figure out how it works.

 

But Arihnda isn’t really focused on that.

 

Her eyes are hot and her throat is tight and she is regretting, top to bottom, every step that brought her here. For the first time in years, for the first time since going to Coruscant in fact, she wishes she were home, on Lothal, in the house she shared with her family, listening to her father fretting about the mine — “Yes,” she she says sharply. And then, less sharply: “I think maybe it would have been better not to call them at all.”

 

He doesn’t speak, but after a moment, almost experimentally, he puts his hand on her back.

 

When she doesn’t shrug him off, he slides his arm around her shoulders. And after a minute, she lets herself lean into him.

 

“You are lonely without your people,” he says finally. She can feel his breath against the top of her head.

 

“Yes,” she admits. And then, taking a little experimental risk of her own, she says: “I think sometimes you’re lonely when you’re with yours.”

 

After a long silence, almost reluctantly, he says: “Perhaps, on occasion.”

 

Finally, sitting twisted sideways into him becomes too uncomfortable, and she shakes him off, and says she is going to bed.

 

Not long after, he follows her. It’s not quite a surprise. She hasn’t told him _not_ to bring the book they’ve been reading, hasn’t _said_ she wants to be alone, with her grief, for just a little while —

 

There’s no book in his hand.

 

She doesn’t realize it until he’s standing beside her, at her side of the bed, an approach he makes so… not casually, but not quickly either —

 

“Commander —?”

 

“I have a question,” he says — says, very seriously, and then waits.

 

He is not so much standing beside her as he is standing over her, looking down at her with dark intensity — She finds her mouth is, unaccountably, quite dry. She licks her lips. “Of course.”

 

He continues watching her, eyes glittering strangely — “I wonder,” he says slowly, raising a hand to touch her face, “if you are lonely when you are with me.”

 

Her heart is in her throat. He puts his other hand on her waist, just as slowly, still watching her. Her breathing is high and shallow. He moves his thumb against her cheek, pulls on her waist, lowers his head a little.

 

“Tell me to stop,” he says softly. It is almost a question.

 

“No,” she breathes, raising her hand to his, against her face. “No, don’t stop.”

 

 

 

**xxxi.**

Water carves out mountains.

 

But it also moves around them.

 

“Admiral Ar’Alani,” Arihnda says, bowing deeply, “I am most honored by your decision to speak with me.”

 

“Yes, Arihnda Pryce. Tell me what you want.”

 

And Arihnda has to hide a little smile. She has learned many things in her time here — including where Thrawn has gotten many of his views and manners.

 

She seats herself, primly. “I think it is not a mystery to either of us that Formbi has a personal interest in stalling Thrawn’s career,” she says, cutting right to the point.

 

Ar’Alani raises her eyebrows. “No, it is not a mystery.”

 

“We both know that’s why Thrass has been assigned as a permanent representative to the Empire, to prevent him providing any —”

 

“Yes, I am aware. What is _new?_ ”

 

Arihnda swallows. Ar’Alani maybe fond of Thrawn, but not necessarily to the point of extending the same degree of latitude to Arihnda herself. “Of course, Admiral. I apologize.” She takes a breath. “I came to suggest that Ascendancy should, perhaps, consider attaching a military adviser to their Imperial Mission.”

 

Ar’Alani narrows her eyes. “Thrawn.”

 

“Yes, Admiral.”

 

“And how do you propose this be accomplished?”

 

Arihnda smiles. “I thought Thrass might be able to make a gentle suggestion to Colonel Wullf Yularen; I am a little out of touch, I admit, but I expect that the Ubiqtorate will have the most use for him — I doubt he will be placed in the field. Although, I could be wrong. Thrass may also want to speak with Grand Moff Whilluf Tarkin. In any case, both of those men have the ear of the Emperor — or did, when I left. If Palpatine makes the request, and if he requests Thrawn by name —”

 

“The Aristocras can hardly say no,” Ar’Alani finishes. “No matter what Formbi wants.”

 

 

 

**xxxii.**

“I have a gift for you,” she says, smiling broadly when Thrawn comes home.

 

“Oh, do you?” he asks, beginning to smile as well.

 

“On the table, there —” she says easily, gesturing to the living room.

 

The little box is wrapped in the same pattern of paper he’d used for the children’s book, almost a year and half ago. He gives her one last questioning look before sitting on the couch to open it. The box beneath the paper is beautiful, of course; she’d spent a whole week trying to find the right one.

 

But the contents of the box matters more.

 

He stops, pauses, hesitates, smile fading from his face — then lifts the item out, holding it gently in his fingertips. It is a pin: a single strip of metal, with several colored squares on its face. “An Imperial rank insignia?”

 

She sits beside him. “ _Your_ Imperial rank Insignia.” He turns his head to look at her. “You don’t have to wear it, of course,” she goes on. “As an attaché of the Permanent Mission of the Chiss Ascendancy to the Galactic Empire, you will obviously be expected to continue wearing your CEDF uniform.”

 

He is still unsmiling. “This was your doing, I suppose?”

 

“Yes. The right conversation with the right person… I asked Ar’Aalani to let me tell you.”

 

There is a moment where his reaction might be, perhaps, a little ambiguous. She holds herself still — waits for a less ambiguous signal — and then, suddenly, he smiles and, folding the rank plaque into his palm, pulls her against him, and sideways and down until, both laughing, they are twined lengthwise on the couch together: she is resting atop him, her head on his chest.

 

He opens his hand again, holding the plaque out where they can both see it.

 

“And what will I be doing, as an _attaché?”_

 

“You will be a special advisor to the Ubiqtorate on military matters.”

 

“I see. And you,” he says a little coyly, “get to go home, I suppose?”

 

“I asked to remain with my husband, yes,” she says innocently.

 

He laughs again, and then grows somber. “Is Thrass to be recalled to the Ascendancy?”

 

“No,” she says, quickly. “No, I thought about that, too.”

 

“Did you?”

 

“Yes.” She turns her head so she is looking at him, chin resting on his chest. “I don’t want you to be lonely.”

 

He looks at the rank plaque a little longer, and then sets it on the table, and brings his hand back, resting it lightly against the back of her head. “With you, clever wife, I will not be.”


End file.
